And on her hair a glory, like a saint: She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven:-Porphyro grew faint: "Anon his heart revives: her vespers done, Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees; But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. "Soon trembling in her soft and chilly nest, As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again." With the rich beauties and the dim obscurities And trust your unprotected heads To cold Aquarius' watery skies. Are not the genial brood of May; And flatters only to betray. "Stern Winter's reign is not yet past Lo! while your buds prepare to blow, And nips your root, and lays you low. But I will shield you; and supply "Come then-'ere yet the morning ray Has drunk the dew that gems your crest, What worth, what goodness there reside, "For there has liberal Nature joined Her riches to the stores of Art, And added to the vigorous mind The soft, the sympathising heart. "Come, then-'ere yet the morning ray Has drunk the dew that gems your crest, By one short hour of transport there. * What an awkward bed-fellow for a tuft of violets! "More blest than me, thus shall ye live "While I alas! no distant date, Mix with the dust from whence I came, Without a stone to tell my name." We subjoin one more specimen of these "wild strains"* said to be "Written two years after the preceding." ECCE ITERUM CRISPINUS. "I wish I was where Anna lies; For I am sick of lingering here, And every hour Affection cries, I lost my all; and life has prov'd "But who, when I am turn'd to clay, And pluck the ragged moss away, And weeds that have "no business there?" *"How oft, O Dart! what time the faithful pair Walk'd forth, the fragrant hour of eve to share, "And who, with pious hand, shall bring The flowers she cherish'd, snow-drops cold, And violets that unheeded spring, To scatter o'er her hallow'd mould? "And who, while Memory loves to dwell While, ever as she read, the conscious maid, And with her finger-point the tenderest line!" Mæviad, pp. 194, 202. Yet the author assures us just before, that in these "wild strains” “all was plain." "Even then (admire, John Bell! my simple ways) Ibid v. 185-92. If any one else had composed these "wild strains," in which "all is plain," Mr. Gifford would have accused them of three things, "1. Downright nonsense. 2. Downright frigidity. 3. Downright doggrel;" and proceeded to anatomise them very cordially in his way. As it is, he is thrilled with a very pleasing horror at his former scenes of tenderness, and gasps at the recollection" of watery Aqua rius!" he! jam satis est! "Why rack a grub-a butterfly upon a 66 wheel?" “I DID IT; and would fate allow, Should visit still, should still deplore- "Take then, sweet maid! this simple strain, "And can thy soft persuasive look, That voice that might with music vie, Thy air that every gazer took, Thy matchless eloquence of eye, "Thy spirits, frolicsome as good, Thy courage, by no ills dismay'd, "Perhaps but sorrow dims my eye: Cold turf, which I no more must view, A long, a last, a sad adieu!" It may be said in extenuation of the low, mechanic vein of these impoverished lines, that they were written at an early agethey were the inspired production of a youthful lover! Mr. Gifford was thirty when he wrote them, Mr. Keats died when he was scarce twenty! Farther it may be said, that Mr. Gifford hazarded his first poetical attempts under all the disadvantages of a neglected education: but the same circumstance, |